Aeration is an important aspect of lawn maintenance. It involves using a specialised piece of equipment to make small holes in the surface of your lawn’s soil.
This helps oxygen, nutrients, and water to penetrate into the roots of the grass, allowing each strand to grow better. This also encourages stronger root growth and a more full-looking, luxurious lawn.
Why Is Aerating Your Lawn Important?
There are a number of reasons that you may choose to aerate your lawn.
Aside from the improvement in grass growth, aeration can also help to alleviate soil compaction – where the dirt is tightly packed together. This can reduce the ability of your lawn to grow and give you a lacklustre lawn.
Aerating your lawn will allow stale carbon dioxide gases to be released from the soil. This can be replaced with oxygen-rich fresh air that will help the grass roots to grow.
Aeration will also help to reduce some of the thatch build-up underneath the surface of the grass. Thatch is a loose layer of organic matter such as dead stems, roots, and shoots of plants that are found just above the soil.
It can begin to build up and accumulate over time and can reduce the quality and appearance of your lawn.
Aerating your lawn can also help to improve the soil drainage and temperature.
How Do You Aerate A Lawn?
You should prepare your lawn prior to aeration, as there are some things that will make the process more effective.
The day before you wish to aerate it, you should mow the lawn to ensure the grass is not too long. This can make the aeration process much more difficult as the blades of grass can get caught in the aerator.
If your lawn is in desperate need of work, you may also find that scarification before aeration can be useful. If the weather is hot and the soil has dried out, you may find it beneficial to water the grass the day before you attempt to aerate it.
When you have chosen your aeration method out of the options listed below, you should ensure that you do it in straight lines. It is recommended that the exterior perimeter of the lawn is aerated lastly as this ensures you cover the whole surface area of your lawn.
Once you have aerated the entire lawn, we recommend applying top dressing and fertilizer to your lawn. This will help the roots of the grass to get sufficient nutrients and hydration, which will help it to grow strong.
It is recommended that you water and mow your lawn regularly in between aeration sessions as this will help the grass to grow thick and healthy.
What Are The Different Ways To Aerate A Lawn?
Lawn Aerator Shoes
As the name suggests, these are shoe-shaped pieces of metal with a number of large spikes on the underside. They are typically worn over trainers or wellington boots and will have a strap to keep the shoes in place.
The spikes tend to be between an inch and an inch and a half long. These kinds of aerators are perfect for small gardens as you simply need to pace around in an organised manner.
We recommend wearing them as you mow your lawn. This will ensure you cover all of the area of your garden.
Hand Aerators
These resemble a pitch fork and are designed to make holes of a specific depth in your garden. They are a really cost efficient method of aerating your lawn although tend to work better for smaller gardens.
Another example of a hand aerator is a hollow tine aerator. These actually remove a small cylinder of soil from your lawn, helping to stop the aeration holes from closing back up again.
If you opt for this aeration method, you should leave all of the soil cylinders on top of the lawn. These will break down and decompose over time to help fill in the exposed holes. Mowing your lawn will help to speed up this process.
Machine Aerators
There are 2 main types of machine aerators. On the smaller end of the spectrum, you can get aerators that are pushed much like a lawn mower. These are better suited to medium-sized gardens.
Larger machine aerators tend to be like those you see being pulled by tractors in fields. They are really effective but tend to be a lot more expensive to purchase.
These tend to only cover a small amount of the lawn that you pass over with the aerator. This means that you should run your aerator over the compacted areas of your lawn multiple times.
When Should You Aerate Your Lawn?
You should make the effort to aerate your lawn at least once annually. This is particularly important if your soil is hard or clay-based. This can be done at any point through the year, but should be done before you apply fertilizer to your lawn.
At a minimum, you should aerate your lawn once every 3 years. Take cues from the growth rate and condition of your lawn to know how often to aerate the soil.
If your lawn is newly laid, you will need to aerate it more frequently. This is because they have an immature root system that needs support as it is developing.
The increased growth stimulation from aeration will help the roots to grow. For these lawns, you should aerate them twice annually.
It is a good idea to aerate your lawn during a period of mild weather. You should not attempt to aerate your lawn if it is very cold, or very dry.
This means that the ideal times of year to aerate your lawn are spring and autumn when the soil is naturally moist. The spring months are the best time to aerate as this will stimulate the grass growth.
